Release 4.01.01. Import of LSP now matches to xLights effects.

[sean]

Release 4.00.01

Let me describe how we have converted LOR,lsp sequences for the last 2 1/2 years. I'll use LOR as an example. A light could be marked up that says "Start this light with RED at intensity 0, ramp it up to full 255 value after 4 seconds". So this would be a 4 second ramp up/

Our frame timing has always been 50ms (20fps) until recently. So we would sample this ramp 20 times a second and then fill in the 80 values (4 seconds at 20fps). Those 80 values would be written to the binary xseq file. Advantage: Very fast and small files. Disadvantage: Although your data has been converted you would not see it in any preview windows.

With this release , Dan Kulp is now matching LOR xml to the closest xLights effect. What does this mean? Instead of a blank SEQUENCER tab, after you convert LSP to xLights you will see your ac channels in our sequencer window with teh correct effects applied.

What about LOR? Dan did this exact same conversion in the last few weeks.

How do you access it? Do NOT use CONVERT, instead use "Import". It is located at the very top menu between "Audio" and "settings".

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Latest releases are found at http://nutcracker123.com/nutcracker/releases/
Issue Tracker is found here: https://github.com/smeighan/xLights/issues

XLIGHTS/NUTCRACKER RELEASE NOTES:
---------------------------------
4.01.01  Jun 1, 2015
    -- enh(gil)   Improve selection logic so it shows a hand when near center of effect to allow drag but also allow selecting the cell underneath
                  if clicking between the center and the edge.  Also fixed the group move so it works with the hand and doesn't incorrectly
                  only move one effect when multiple are selected.
    -- bug(gil)   Fix a couple crashes when clicking in grid without timing track active.
    -- bug(gil)   Fix paste so it offsets within the selected cell if needed.
    -- enh(dkulp) Prompt if changes before close or open of new file.  Fixes #247
    -- enh(dkulp) Start work on Import of channels from LSP msq files
    -- enh(dkulp) Allow Fire to be from top/left/right/bottom   Fixes #245 (kind of)
    -- enh(dkulp) Allow effects to provide a "pre-rendered" background for display on the grid.  Update "SKips" effect to use it.  (provides scroll performance enhancement)
    -- enh(dkulp) Add ability for Garland effect to go Up/Down/Up+Down/Down+Up/Left/Right/Left+Right/Right+Left

[gerry]

Words fail me !!

An as recent ex LSP user, this is absolutely great , but please slow down and let us mere mortals catch up 

I just about downloaded the previous release and started using it after watching the two videos.

[gerry]

So,

Is there any reason to use the Convert option at all ?

Just prior to this change (at 4.00.35) , due to chatter between Gil and myself , I had switched over to using
'Settings' -> Sequence settings ->Data layers and then import , rather than Convert  (for LSP).

As far as I can see , there is a Convert option when creating a new sequence (with two variations) , or one can use Convert afterwards , or the import tab or the settings as above.

[dkulp]

The Convert option is generally now just used for "pure" HLS or LOR or similar users that do all of the sequencing in their native sequencer but want to convert there sequences to FSEQ to run on FPP.   If they aren't planning to do anything in the xLights, it's much simpler.

For people that will continue to do SOME sequencing in HLS/LOR/whatever and then use xLights to augment/overlay that work with additional xLights sequencing, the data layers are likely best.   You can continue to update the LOR/HLS effects in LOR/HLS and just refresh the data layer.

For folks that are trying to completely ditch LOR/HLS/LSP/etc..., the "Import" functionality is the best option.  It brings the data in as actual xlights effects that you can edit, copy/paste/etc....  However, if you re-change the origin in LOR/LMS/LSP, you will have difficulty re-importing do to conflicting effects and such.  The import is kind of a one-time thing.

Hope that helps explain the options a bit.

[gerry]

Thanks dan,

It does. Maybe your reply should be made into into a sticky, as it is likely to come up quite often.

[Phrog30]

Thanks for the prompt on saving when exiting.  If I may, I suggest that focus be moved from yes, to no.  This way if somebody were to accidentally hit enter, it would cancel, instead of closing and losing changes.

[gerry]

Hello,

Just checking that what I am doing is correct.
I created a new sequence , then added default timing marks, added all the models to the sequencer tab and then used the Import , import effects and selected an LSP MSQ file.

I selected one of my models Arch1 (I assume that you can only do one at a time ), pressed enter , clicked Add Model for Import and received the first screen in the attached Word doc . is this correct , because it would appear that I have to then select each channel one at a time and with thousands, that would not be feasible, unless I was only doing one model.
(Even a start + end channel option to then automatically select the ones in between would be a great help). In LSP, these channels are attached to a "controller " (which many if us define  exactly the same as the model in xlights- at least that was how I learnt to do it) , which then links to the channels. I will post a screen shot after typing this in (see attachment 2 both pages) . It may therefore be possible to prompt for the LSP "controller" name and derive and populate the channels within that for each xlights models

I then clicked on the 'Add Model For Import' button again , but the model list does not pop up
A message was displayed "Could not find a model or group named      " 

Then , clicking on the same button again , adds two new lines each time to the bottom of the screen ie a blank line and a Strand 1 line (see page 2 of screen layout)

Saved , exited , restarted xlights and was able to repeat. (have edited post with exact messages etc)   

Should any help be required , please let me know.
 

[dkulp]

I selected one of my models Arch1 (I assume that you can only do one at a time ), pressed enter , clicked Add Model for Import and received the first screen in the attached Word doc . is this correct , because it would appear that I have to then select each channel one at a time and with thousands, that would not be feasible, unless I was only doing one model.

You can do multiple models at once.  Keep selecting the models from the drop down and hitting Add.   You can then assign channels.   I strongly suggest then using the Save Mapping to save the mapping so you can re-use it for your next sequence.

(Even a start + end channel option to then automatically select the ones in between would be a great help). In LSP, these channels are attached to a "controller " (which many if us define  exactly the same as the model in xlights- at least that was how I learnt to do it) , which then links to the channels. I will post a screen shot after typing this in (see attachment 2 both pages) . It may therefore be possible to prompt for the LSP "controller" name and derive and populate the channels within that for each xlights models

Not being an LSP user at all, I'm not sure what the conventions are.  If a "controller" in LSP would map to a strand on an xLights model, that would be easy to supported.   The LMS and HLS imports support that if it detects a CCR (LMS) or a pixel plane (HLS).  I just don't know the conventions in LSP.

I then clicked on the 'Add Model For Import' button again , but the model list does not pop up
A message was displayed "Could not find a model or group named      "

That's a bug.  Thanks. 

[gerry]

Thanks Dan,

This is the start of my work day . When I get home this evening I will open the LSP MSQ (xml) file and see if I can identify the LSP strand linkages - looks to be similar to what you have for the others.

Yes - I will create a map too.

And happy to try out or test anything ..

[gerry]

Hello Dan,

I had a play with the import option. What I then gleaned was that this does one node at a time , so if I had 4,000 nodes , would have to select the correct mode 4000 times.

If so , I don't think that that is do-able. So I tried something a bit different. I selected one model (Arch1) , and mapped the first and last node  and saved a map (LSPMap1). Tested to make sure it would import and it did for the two nodes.
I then looked at what was created and using Excel tried to generate all the entries in between and saved it back(LSPMap2). Tried to ensure that the tabs were the same. 
But when I tried to use map2 , I got an error message as attached in the Word doc ie 'Model Arch1            not part of sequence. Not mapping channels to this model' .
have eyeballed it and cant see what was wrong.
Would it be possible  to have a look and see what was wrong (see attached data in zip file in drop box link). If not possible , that's okay.

Also,
once you select a model, it drops to the bottom of the list - not sure if that is as design.
When selecting channels, they don't appear in sequence (I can see why), but it means that trying to find the channel number is tricky. 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/mvi2xjapg47ypf5/LSPImportTest.zip?dl=0

[gerry]

Not being an LSP user at all, I'm not sure what the conventions are.  If a "controller" in LSP would map to a strand on an xLights model, that would be easy to supported.   The LMS and HLS imports support that if it detects a CCR (LMS) or a pixel plane (HLS).  I just don't know the conventions in LSP.

This is what I have been able to gather by trying to parse the data
I opened the xml file ‘1f4929bf-9a8e-4739-9bde-a1bc7b40720f’ and had a look

What is visible to the LSP user (ie the controller which is equivalent to a model) is the Controller name (eg Pipes 5)


Each controller name , then has a number of channel ids  (eg 7361, 7364, 7367 etc) , which then has the channel name (Channel #1)
the green , red , blue channelids (7360,7361,7362)

So everything pertaining to the controller (‘Pipes 5’) ie each channel id within that should map to the corresponding model/node in xlights if mapping by strand and if they are aligned and exactly the same.

Not sure if this helps. I have attached screen prints in this thread above of my config and posted the files in another post today/
I also understand that Tom Langley who worked with Sean last year is the expert on getting data back and forwards.
 

ControllerGuid>1f4929bf-9a8e-4739-9bde-a1bc7b40720f</ControllerGuid>
  <ControllerID>1</ControllerID>
  <ControllerName>Pipes 5</ControllerName>
  <ControllerOrdinal>0</ControllerOrdinal>
  <ControllerProtocol>6</ControllerProtocol>
  <ControllerType>3</ControllerType>
  <ControllerZone>1</ControllerZone>
  <EnableControllerOutput>true</EnableControllerOutput>
  <GreenControllerID>1</GreenControllerID>
  <GroupName>E1.31 Controllers</GroupName>

[gerry]

Hello Dan,

The LSP import function is looking much nicer.

Seeing the LSP channel names (aka model names) is so much easier.

I created a map for one model (ie Arch1 ) , by selecting a few nodes at the beginning and end of the model and saved the results (see first attachment)

Then I edited the file  in Wordpad and copied and pasted the target to the remaining nodes , edited it to replace the channel number , saved (see 2nd attachment) and used that to import the entire model . Worked very well and did not take that long to do.
Obviously would be nice to be able to just select the name eg 'Arch 1' in the target and have the target nodes populated.
 

[dkulp]

Try clicking on the "Map by Strand" check box.   The nodes should go away.   The drop down should then just have "Fence Arch 1" on it.   Select that for your Strand 1 source and it should automatically grab all the individual channels.

[gerry]

Awesome ! Will give that a go later today.

[logandc99]

Sorry.... I am very new to Xlight4 so I apologize now. I have used LSP for the last 2 years and was hoping to import the sequences into XL4. My understanding from one of the latests updates is that the effects (or at least near equivalent) can now be imported from LSP into XL4 (or have I got that completely wrong)
I tried following the posts above but I must be missing something.
I have created a new musical sequence and at this stage added in four models called "sprial trees" which match the spiral trees in LSP. I then went to Import, clicked Import Effects and selected my "Sugar Plum Fiary 2014.msq" file and clicked open. After a few seconds pause, I got  the Map Channels screen come up. This is where I get lost.
I selected Spiral tree1 from the list at the top (next to Add Model for Import) and then clicked Add model for import.
What I then get is the model name column populated, the strand column populated and the Node column populated with node 1 to 100 but there is nothing in the Channel or colour columns.
I'm not really sure what to do next....everything I try results in no effects being put into the sequencer tab.
Am I doing something wrong or totally misinterpreting the whole "import an LSp sequence" thing.
Again, sorry for the dumb questions but XL4 is very new to me but looks pretty cool and better yet.... you can sequence in OSX!!